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"Spotify of EV Networks"

3K views 22 replies 12 participants last post by  eva 
#1 ·
Hello everyone,

Here’s a new EV charging startup that we are launching: Bonnet

With a single monthly subscription, drivers get unlimited charge on a multitude of public charging networks in the UK and internationally (all of them eventually). No more different pay-as-you-go fees per kWh, plug-in fees or membership fees for different networks.

One monthly subscription payment. Unlimited charging. Unlimited Networks.

It’s a “Spotify for EV networks”.

Please have a look around on our website to find out more. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Feel free to send any inquiries or recommendations to patrick@bonnetelectric.com
 
#2 ·
Well, your website is shiny and nice, but there are a few glaring omissions:

- What networks you will ultimately use, I assume you are a middle man and reselling just like Spotify is buying licences for content and redistributing it. Will you aim to have every network available or only a few? If it's only a few then I can barely see this being worth using, it needs to cover 90% of all EV chargers.

- What you will use for payment: an app, RFID card, prepaid debit card, carrier pigeon...

- DC fast chargers only? AC chargers only? Both? Your 120kWh per month works out as 25p/kWh if users use the full amount. That is among the lower prices for DCFC without even considering the subscription cost of e.g. Polar or the £1 start fee of GeniePoint. Your unlimited seems almost too good to be true. That is about as much electricity as I use for my PHEV. If I had a full EV I would charge at a fast charger every few days and at £10 of electricity per charge it would quickly end up uneconomical for you guys.
 
#6 ·
@tom66 thanks for your input!

-We will be offering both app and RFID cards, which are linked to your debit/credit card.

-We currently cannot disclose our partner networks, but we are charger speed and type agnostic and will be offering AC and DC networks at a large range of speeds
 
#3 ·
In one word.
Expensive.
£0.30 / kw for low usage? nothing new comparing to other networks.
The only good thing I can see good about it is the single network but then you're trying to kill competition.
Unless you come close to what we can get at home £0.14/kw I can't see why I would ditch the cards/apps I have already. This considering that actually it will be working flawlessly 24/7
I strongly dispute the 68% figure. At the moment I have free charge across Scotland, once the gov starts charging for it I'll simply use the public stations only to get enough "juice" to get home and will charge there far cheaper saving more than 50%. So my public usage will be more likely 5% to 10%
 
#4 ·
In one word.
Expensive.
£0.30 / kw for low usage? nothing new comparing to other networks.
The only good thing I can see good about it is the single network but then you're trying to kill competition.
Unless you come close to what we can get at home £0.14/kw I can't see why I would ditch the cards/apps I have already. This considering that actually it will be working flawlessly 24/7
I strongly dispute the 68% figure. At the moment I have free charge across Scotland, once the gov starts charging for it I'll simply use the public stations only to get enough "juice" to get home and will charge there far cheaper saving more than 50%. So my public usage will be more likely 5% to 10%
Hi @husoi, this price would include rapid chargers and, ultimately, a lot of charging networks, not just 1, allowing for roaming with no extra fees or hassle.
 
#7 ·
Now this could be a very intriguing prospect for me.....

I am considering moving jobs, which would require a 80mile round trip by car. Given my lack of home charging, I was thinking I was going to have to abandon the EV, until I noticed they had chargers at the offices. Six 22kW PodPoint chargers (perfect for the Zoe), however they charge £0.25/kWh. Good in that it deters many from using it, so crucially always likely to be available. Bad though, as I only need 7kW given the hours I am parked and could be paying a cheaper rate!

So 80miles per day is 1,600miles/month. Assuming a yearly average of 4mi/kWh, that's 400kWh/month + 10% charging losses is 440kWh consumed every month (ignoring weekend/evening use).

At your £50/month unlimited plan, that would drive my costs down from £0.25/kWh (£110/month), to just £0.11/kWh (£50/month).

Not to mention the savings from additional weekend/evening use....

If you get PodPoint on board, I might be very interested!
 
#9 ·
I too would be interested. Again, home charging is going to be tricky for me if at all possible (Currently waiting for shiny new Ioniq to be built and delivered, my first EV).

What is in it for the Network Providers? For those who will use the unlimited service such as DrEskimo above, presumably you would be losing out so are you relying on others to not use up all of their allowance so as to balance out the cost for yourselves?

Regardless of what anyone says, good on you for attempting to solve the current situation and I really hope you can pull it off. The only thing I would say is that perhaps you should have waited until you can announce which networks you can cover before you went live with the website. I'll be watching closely!
 
#13 ·
@husoi,
Public charging cannot be cheaper than home charging for long term. They need to pay full VAT while you only pay 5%. They need to invest in expensive chargers while yours is just domestic charger. They often need to pay high power connection fee (some may be as extraorbitant as 2M quoting Ionity) while you pay nothing.
Public charging is for convenience for long distance travel / those with no access to home charger / etc.

This may not be a solution for you but i don't think you allow everyone to use your charger either :)

Anyway, good luck with that project. The less complicated it is the better for the future of EVs.
 
#16 ·
PlugSurfing is a great company trying to solve the same problem as us, but they have a very different business model from us. They are essentially just a "marketplace" of bringing chargers and drivers together under one roof.

Each point has their own pricing/plug-in fees/overstay fees etc. that the driver has to deal with. We simply take all of that out of the equation for the driver and simply let him pay one fee a month based on their charging habits and they can use any charger anywhere.
 
#18 ·
I don't think that solving the mess of apps/rfid cards/subscriptions/prepay that constitute the current public charger networks by creating another subscription service is the right answer. Charge points accepting credit/debit cards directly is what will be expected by most people (well, it's what I will be looking for before I move from a PHEV to a BEV. That and a BEV large estate car, but that's a different thread).
There might be an opportunity in the "fuel" card space for company car/van fleets, but I can't see companies wanting to pay a subscription for that (unless it worked out demonstrably cheaper than paying for what's used in all circumstances).
 
#23 ·
Hi @DrEskimo,

Thanks for asking! We have quite a few suppliers on board, but cannot disclose them just yet as we are still signing up some more to get as wide of a selection as possible. The app will be released a bit later this year and a supplier list should be available by the end of spring. Gathering all of them together is no easy task as you can imagine :) We will keep you posted!

Best,

Bonnet Team
 
#21 ·
Slightly off topic, there are millions maybe of pounds and euros thrown into the next great new roaming middle-man app. There are not so much money thrown into creating a decent charging network. For me another app doesn't necessarily make my life better; each app has it's own collection of charging points, some overlap, some exist only on one single app, so it's not solving any problem as I will have to deal with yet another app.

But creating a charging network with some thousands of reliable, accessible, reserved for EV drivers only, properly maintained, easy to use, covered from the elements, illuminated and with trash bins nearby... boy oh boy, I'd pay a premium for that! I have 7 apps now on my phone, just for charging my car and sometimes I check the availability on one app and the price on another for the same charger... that's too much already.
 
#22 ·
Slightly off topic, there are millions maybe of pounds and euros thrown into the next great new roaming middle-man app.
I don't think it's millions. More likely a few thousand by some minor software houses.
But it's easy money for clever people (and some not so clever). Classic "computers are the future" think.
I've yet to see a computer dig a trench and install a charger. It's virtual vs real.
Give it a few years and most will be gone, or will languish in a forgotten corner of the app store.
 
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